A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) (27 page)

Tomas had started down the slope, Jose and Aldo watching him from what little shoulder there was on the side of the road.

“I thought you said we had to go down after them,” Miguel snarked.

“Shut up. We’re going one at a time.” Jose grabbed his shoulder and shoved him toward the edge. “You next.”

“Fuck this shit. They’re either hurt or dead.”

“We need proof one way or another.”

Watching Tomas, Miguel figured out where the man had started down and tried to match his path. The loose dirt and rocks kept threatening to dissolve the treacherous slope out from under him and toss him headlong down it. He figured out he needed to practically sit on his ass with his heels dug into the ground to keep from tumbling down the embankment.

He looked up at where Jose and Aldo were watching. “Just how the fuck we getting back up again?”

Jose pointed at the trees on either side of the odd gouge in the landscape. It wasn’t a natural ravine, more like someone had taken the trees out years ago. Or maybe a landslide or something had cleared it. There were old, dead trees, decades-old from the looks of it, on their sides, like they’d been mowed down.

“We’ll have to work from tree to tree on the way back up. We’ll make it.”

“Then get your ass down here, tough guy.”

“I am. As soon as I call Manuel and let him know.” Jose pulled his phone out. “Shit. No signal.”

Miguel stopped his progress. “Either get your ass down here, or I’m coming back up there. I’m not going any farther until you do.”

“Fine.” Jose and Aldo picked starting points and began making their way down.

Only then did Miguel continue his progress. It was a lot farther down than he’d first guessed, too, and he lost sight of Tomas a few times as his footing disappeared under him and he had to throw himself sideways toward the trees to stop his fall. He was beginning to worry he’d end up breaking his neck in the process and suspected getting back up wouldn’t be nearly as easy as Jose said it would.

I am
not
getting paid enough for this bullshit.

* * * *

“Beck, stop,” Dewi said. “That’s Jack’s car.”

Joaquin was driving and quickly caught up with them from the other direction as they headed for the great hall. After sliding to a stop next to Joaquin and rolling down the window, Beck told him to turn around and follow.

They’d need every Enforcer they could get working on this. Unfortunately, fourteen other Enforcers who would be there for the weddings on Saturday hadn’t arrived yet. If time wasn’t so critical, Dewi would be on the phone to every last one of them now, ordering their asses there ASAP.

“These fuckers couldn’t have waited a few days to start trouble, huh?” Dewi muttered.

“Sure, with a bunch more people and kids around,” Beck said.

“And more Enforcers. Enough to strip the flesh from their bones.”

“You
really
want a reason to cancel your wedding, don’t you?”

“Not like this,” she grumbled.

When they reached the great hall, they found Peyton inside and calling for attention from the twenty-odd shifters already gathered. When the pack Alpha spoke, people listened.

Especially when nearly everyone wore identically grim expressions.

Peyton unfolded a large map and spread it out on a couple of long folding tables pushed together. It was a satellite map of the compound and surrounding national forest, with the roads and fire trails highlighted.

“Listen up, people. Who’s armed?”

All but four people raised their hands.

“You who aren’t armed. Can you shift?” The three men and one woman nodded.

“Fantastic. How’s your tracking skills?”

They nodded.

“Excellent.”

Dewi spoke up. “How many armed non-shifters?”

Five men and a woman raised their hands.

“You need to pair up with the unarmed shifters,” Dewi said. “They’ll track the intruders and you can shoot their asses.”

“Who, exactly, are we going after?” one guy asked. “This is a Muster. I don’t know everyone here, and I don’t want to shoot someone innocent just because I don’t know them.”

“Mexican cartel thugs,” Joaquin said. “They are all humans, Hispanic males, and they won’t smell remotely local, or like pack. All men, likely armed. They won’t know anything about wolves or the Muster, and they’re looking for me.”

“Based on what Web told me,” Peyton said, “they aren’t dressed like they’re here for the great outdoors, either. Expensive loafers, slacks, jewelry. Think bad movie cliche for Mexican drug cartel guys, and you’re on target. I wish I was making this up. If in doubt, non-lethally neutralize them and bring them back here and hold them. But if any of ours are at risk from these fucks, don’t hesitate to take them out.”

More people rushed in and they were quickly updated. Peyton started divvying up search areas, concentrating heavier numbers on the southernmost sections of the compound where it was most likely the intruders were located. Dewi checked her phone, but she hadn’t received any calls or texts from Ken yet.

She didn’t miss how Beck frowned as he, too, checked his phone.

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Beck said. “They could be out of range. Or they could be talking and not paying attention to their phones. I would hope you’d want Ken paying attention to the road and not his phone.”

“That doesn’t feel right and you damn well know it.”

“I know the pack Alpha has given us our marching orders.” Beck’s blue gaze bore into Dewi’s. “If any of these thugs so much as lays a hand on one of ours, I’ll rip their arm out of the socket and beat them with it.
Before
I kill them.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ken’s heart pounded in his chest as he led Nami toward the south and away from the crash scene. He didn’t want to waste energy talking, he wanted to
move
.

Every time he had to slow down, he glanced behind them, certain they were being followed and feeling eyes on them but not spotting anyone. As the morning and their frantic trek wore on, the sky definitely took on an increasingly ominous feel. Not nearly as severe as a Florida thunderstorm, but the building clouds and dropping temps meant they’d have an even harder time of it if Dewi and the others didn’t come after them soon.

What he didn’t admit aloud to Nami was his biggest concern—that he didn’t know how long it’d take the wolves to find them, or even locate where they went off the road. Once someone realized they were missing, there were a lot of miles to cover between the compound and Spokane. With few guardrails on the main stretch of road between the town and I-90, it’d be difficult for anyone to tell that’s where they went off the road.

The stronger the feeling grew that they were being followed, the faster he wanted to move. Yes, he knew they were being pursued, obviously, by the men from the other car.

But this was…different. If the men had put eyes on them, there would have been shouting, maybe even gunfire.

This felt like they were being observed and watched by someone who didn’t want to reveal themselves.

A couple of times he glanced back quickly enough to catch glimpses of something, a shadow darting for cover, but the form was too short and far too quiet to be a human.

Hopefully it was just an animal, or maybe his frantically terrified imagination.

“Ken,” Nami whispered.

He stopped and turned to see her leaning against a tree and shaking her head. He walked back to her. “What?”

“I need to rest a minute. How long we been going?”

He pulled out his phone. “Almost two hours.”

“Can’t we rest? Please?”

“For just a minute.” He walked past her, the way they’d come, staring at the ground. No, he didn’t spot any obvious tracks. Between the pine needles and leaves and sometimes hardscrabble slope, anyone who wasn’t an expert tracker would have difficulty following them.

He could only hope the men somewhere behind them were not expert trackers. Then again, he wasn’t much of a tracker himself. Maybe they were doing the equivalent of painting the way in neon, for all he knew.

He stared, slowly scanning the landscape, holding his breath and listening.

The wind…birds…insects…

And that was it.

Somewhere below them he occasionally heard what he thought might be a river, but he couldn’t be certain.

Still, he felt a watchful gaze upon them. He’d bet upon it if he could.

Someone—some
thing
—was following them.

“Ken,” she whispered. “What is it? Is it them?”

He slowly shook his head. “No, nothing.” No use worrying her any more than she already was. He prayed she didn’t collapse on him. There was no way he’d be able to carry her. It was all he could do to pick Dewi up.

He slowly turned, looking west down the slope but letting his peripheral vision hover to his right, to the north, behind them.

Yep, there it was again, a dark shape that appeared little more than a shadow darting between trees.

Since it wasn’t human-shaped, he was going to go with the comforting assumption that it wasn’t human. It was too short, too silent for that. But…something still gnawed at him.

If it wasn’t human, and it wasn’t an overly large predator, he knew he could defend Nami from it with the tire iron.

Even the ball of fear at the base of his spine wasn’t screaming any louder than it already was, although it recognized their concealed follower as a predator.

Not likely a bear. It probably wouldn’t be that stealthy, for starters, and it would look a lot larger.

Dewi had warned him there was potentially dangerous wildlife out here, apex predators. Bio wolves, bears, mountain lions, coyotes. Even some of the grazers could be dangerous if someone messed with them during the wrong time of year. Moose and elk would charge, as would bison. Although bison and moose weren’t a concern in this terrain, and it definitely wasn’t a bison or a moose he kept spotting behind them.

Logic made him doubt any vegetarian prey species would track them like this.

That spoke to a predator.

For the hell of it, Ken turned his back to Nami and unzipped, watering the base of a tree. Hopefully Dewi and the others would smell it and be able to keep up with them.

He returned to Nami’s side. “Come on,” he said, taking her arm. “We need to get moving again.”

“Why can’t we go downhill now?”

“Because they will. They’ll think we went downhill. That’s why I threw the coffee cup that way.”

“We don’t even know they’re still chasin’ us. They might have given up already.”

“We don’t know that they
aren’t
. I won’t risk our lives. We keep moving.”

She glanced up at the sky. “It looks like it’s gonna rain.”

“If it does, it does.”

“The temperature’s dropping, too.”

Ken took a deep breath and let it out again before leaning in close. “Nami,” he whispered, trying to channel Dewi’s calm strength as much as he could. “We. Have. To. Move.”

She finally nodded and let him take the lead again. He slowed down a little, trying to pick the easiest path he could through the trees, but it wasn’t easy going even for him. He couldn’t take them directly uphill because it was hard enough for Nami to maintain their current trajectory. As it was, he suspected he’d already taken them farther down the slope than he wanted to.

If he could go downhill and try to spot how far they were from the river, he might be able to see the men, but he didn’t dare leave Nami alone. If he took her with him, getting her up the slope again would be an issue. Better to go slower up here than to descend into the valley and get caught with the cold water on one side and a steep uphill rise on the other.

Ken referred to his iPhone compass. He’d put it in airplane mode for now to conserve the battery. The compass feature still worked despite not having a signal. He tried not to use it too much, afraid of wearing the battery down, but with the sun shrouded by clouds it was growing increasingly difficult to navigate by shadows.

The breeze had picked up some, too.

It was nearing two o’clock. He’d just stopped to pee again and was thinking about trying to find some place they could hunker down and wait when somewhere in the distance behind and downhill from them, to the northwest, they heard the distant crack of a lone gunshot.

Nami jumped, clinging to Ken, her eyes wide with terror.

He tried to comfort her but leaned in, his lips close to her ear. “That was in the distance.”

She nodded, not looking convinced.

He tipped his head in the direction they were still heading. She nodded, not loosening her grip on his arm and keeping up with him as he quickened his pace.

One good thing Ken noticed a few minutes later—it no longer felt like they were being watched.

* * * *

“What the
fuck
are you doing?” Jose screamed at Aldo as he ran down the slope toward him.

The man pointed with the 9mm in his hand. “Fucking snake!”

“Put that goddamned thing away.” Yes, Aldo had blown the head off the snake, but he’d also likely given away their position.

So much for silent pursuit.

He had the four of them spread out from the river and up the slope, but at the shot Miguel and Tomas had come running down to join them.

“I vote we go back,” Miguel said. “We’re going to get lost. We haven’t seen any sign of them since we left the crash site. For all we know, they might have gone back the other way. I
told
you we should have tried north. They would head back toward the town to get help.”

Yes, that was something Jose had already considered. The car’s occupants had already left by the time they’d reached the wreck. The discarded coffee cup, too far away to have been ejected from the wreck, indicated they’d gone downhill.

But from that point…he had no clue.

There was something else bothering him, something he didn’t dare voice.

Jose was loyal to Manuel Segura. He would follow the man, follow his orders.

Unfortunately, he didn’t agree with how his boss was going about this. Raul had raped and murdered that girl, something which didn’t set well with Jose, who had a daughter that same age. Manuel had a blind spot to his younger brother’s more heinous shenanigans, and it wasn’t the first time.